Santa Cruz wharf repairs delayed over protections for seagulls before it washed into the Pacific during storm

Santa Cruz’s wharf was damaged two years ago but repairs only began this winter because seagulls made their nests in the wharf’s wooden beams and their protection was considered of more importance than the pier. Codified California environmental activism held up the $4 million project until it was too late, only allowing for the installation of new timber piles as winter set in with its attendant storms. The repairs did not come soon enough to save the pier.

Even the construction equipment was lost to the sea, The Mercury News reported. The seagulls are protected by California's Coastal Commission, in which the city of Santa Cruz had to first obtain a permit to repair the wharf. The commission mandates that most heavy construction has to occur between September and March to avoid any impact on the birds during nesting season.

“Our work window is a very narrow six months over the winter time when we tend to have storms and big waves,” said Tony Elliott, director of Parks and Recreation, which oversees the wharf. “The wharf is a 110-year-old structure, and it requires a lot of work … It takes more than six months out of the year to maintain it effectively.”

Neither seagulls or the pigeon guillemot that also nested on the wharf are endangered species, yet the Coastal Commission insists that this is irrelevant and that federal and state laws forbid any interference in their nesting areas.

After the city sought some leeway from the commission, it agreed to a few exceptions. The piles could be installed during nesting season but only after 10 a.m. and only for four hours a day and if the workers didn’t get any closer than 300 feet from the nests.

“Practically, it didn’t change the dynamics,” Elliott said, meaning that the city was still hamstrung and couldn’t get the work done. Commission spokesman Joshua Smith claims his group has been doing great work with Santa Cruz “to allow for wharf maintenance while also ensuring that sensitive species are protected.” The commission did issue an emergency permit so the city could remove the wrecked Dolphin Restaurant from the wharf.

But Jon Bombaci, a former wharf manager who retired in 2021, said the commission has not made life easier for human beings using the wharf. “There needs to be a reassessment of the policies that direct the Coastal Commission’s permitting process,” he said. “Their time restrictions were antithetical to getting repairs done.”

Bombaci also cited the lunacy allowing a wharf to deteriorate and collapse when the sole reason is to preserve a nesting area that will eventually be lost to decay when the wharf collapses—as it has—due to a refusal to make repairs.

“These birds are nesting in a manmade structure,” he said. “If you don’t do the repairs in a timely manner, you’re going to lose the whole thing anyways.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has been a big booster of ecological programs, including one where he ordered dams destroyed to protect salmon but destroyed their spawning beds by doing so.